Prison Ignored Inmate's Flesh-Eating Infection

Prison Ignored Inmate’s Flesh-Eating Infection

Harold Millican, who was sentenced to six months in prison for drug charges, has filed a lawsuit against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, claiming no one took him to the hospital for a flesh-eating infection.

Millican said he fell and hurt his harm during a work assignment at Gist State Jail. The wound didn’t heal properly and he developed a a methicillin-resistant staph infection. Millican was sent to the infirmary, but was never taken outside for treatment because there was no one available to take him to the hospital.

The wound turned yellow and green and started to eat away at his skin. When he was finally taken to the hospital about a week later, he fainted in his dorm. Millican went into shock because the infection was poisoning his system.

“They sat up there and watched him suffer,” Allie Booker, Millican’s attorney, said. “How can you allow someone to go through that?”

Millican had to undergo several surgeries and additional treatments because of “flesh-eating bacteria that was able to develop because TDCJ refused necessary treatment.”

“TDCJ knew that allowing an abscess that was yellow and green in color, growing, painful, damaging the skin, eating away at the skin and muscle of Plaintiff, and that had a foul odor, was dangerous and/or harmful to his health,” the lawsuit says. “TDCJ knew or should have known that the denial of treatment for a wound such as this was an act that was deliberately indifferent to Plaintiff’s health and safety.”

The lawsuit asks for at least $200,000 in monetary damages and for the Texas prison system to improve their training so that officers know how to guarantee proper medical care for the future.